Sunday, June 1, 2014

More About Marianne Dashwood as the biracial Dido Elizabeth Belle and "the nicest little black bitch"

After posting this morning
about additional “Dido” allusions that JA hid in plain sight in S&S, it
occurred to me to follow up by searching in the usual Austen archives and
databases for prior comments and insights about Sir JohnMiddleton’s reference to “the nicest little black
bitch ofa pointer”, which I claimed was
actually a crude, racist and sexist, coded reference to Marianne Dashwood as a
biracial “Dido”, in the same vein as Governor Hutchinson’s crude, racist
comments about Dido Elizabeth Belle.

And when I did, I was not
entirely surprised to find that the author of the one and only intriguing prior
perspective on that passage was Anielka, who in 2011 in Janeites wrote the
following:

“Even Sir John describing
John Willoughby "what sort of a young man is he?" "As good a
kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A very decent shot, and there is
not a bolder rider in England.......and has got the nicest little black bitch
of a pointer I ever ......" suddenly reminds me that at the end of the
book when Sir John tells Willoughby that Marianne is nearly dying he ends the
conversation with reminding Willoughby of a pointer puppy he promised him, of
all the things that might be playing on both men's minds whilst Marianne was
supposedly ringing down the final curtain, hunting continues to predominate.
"Sir John Middleton,.......told me that Marianne Dashwood was dying of a
putrid fever .... when we parted......he reminded me of an old promise about a
pointer puppy." I wonder if some day Willoughby was to be similarly
reminded of his promise that Queen Mab should receive Marianne at Delaford? “

Anielka subsequently went
into a detailed analysis of shadowy subtext in S&S regarding a female dog’s
gestation, which I found ingenious but not entirely convincing. But what I did
immediately note was Anielka picking up in those comments on a third passage in
S&S about Willoughby and hunting dogs, and one which moreover is
explicitly, as Anielka suggests, tagged to the first one.

So, now looking at all
three of these passages in S&S as if Sir John and Willoughby are speaking
in code, and the “black bitch of a pointer”is actually a human
female---specifically, Marianne Dashwood—it casts extremely suspicious light on
(1) Sir John’s initial offer to the Dashwood women of a place to live at Barton
Cottage, and Sir John’s making a big deal aboutBrandonbeing interested in
Marianne, and (2) Marianne’s winding up marrying Brandon after having no
interest in him whatsoever when she first meets and gets to know him.

Among Janeites, I think it
safe to say that the eventual marriage of Marianne and Brandon is, along with that
of Fanny and Edmund, the least romantic, and least convincing ending among JA’s
6 novels—paling in contrast to the romance that oozes out of the other 4. So,
the idea of Marianne being in some sense sold to Brandon is not coming completely
from left field, as we Americans say—it fits, in an oddly disturbing way.

And specifically, I am
suggesting that Jane Austen is implying that Marianne, like a specially bred
pointer—and like an African slave--- has been promised, as in “sold”, to avery interested buyer —and could that buyer
be Colonel Brandon? And, perhaps, Marianne in the end sells herself to save her
family from poverty?

And finally, here is what
I wrote a year ago in my post about the veiled allusion to As You Like It in S&S, in which, without realizing the racial
subtext, I detected Jane Austen emulating Shakespeare’s Orlando’s drawing a
parallel between himself and a farm animal (a metaphor we know JA used in her
letters to describe pregnant wives):

“Shortly said, we have
Orlando making the same symbolic connection between beasthood and
victimization, that I claim is present in all of Jane Austen’s novels, in 1.1
of AYLI:

“for my part, he keeps me rustically at home, or, to speak more properly, stays
me here at home unkept; for call you that keeping for a gentleman of my birth,
that differs not from the stalling of an ox? His horses are bred better; for,
besides that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their manage,
and to that end riders dearly hired: but I, his brother, gain nothing under him
but growth...””
And now look at the resonance of Orlando’s complaint to Sir John’s conflating
canine female with human female:[‘black
bitch of a pointer’etc]”

When the racist subtext is
factored in, the metaphor is much more powerful, because JA is clearly bringing
into the theme of female subjugation in S&S the subliminal imagery of
African slaves, who of course were (tragically) human beings in her world who
were LITERALLY bought and sold like nonhuman animals.

Follow by Email

Jane Austen Search Engine

A lovely bit of praise from my youngest (at heart) supporter in Seattle:

"...Two sessions were outstanding: Juliet McMasters on the more subtle, deeper meanings of "Northanger Abbey" and a Darcy-like young lawyer, Arnie Perlstein, who revealed his very plausible theory that the "shadow story" behind much of Jane Austen's work is the horror of multiple childbirth and women's deaths. I am a Jane-Austen-as-feminist person and this really resonated with me!"

Thank you, Mary!

"Arnie's theories [about Austen and Shakespeare] may strain credulity, but so much the greater his triumph if they turn out to have persuasive force after they are properly presented and maturely considered. That is what publication is all about"

"When great or unexpected events fall out upon the stage of this sublunary world—the mind of man, which is an inquisitive kind of a substance, naturally takes a flight behind the scenes to see what is the cause and first spring of them."--Tristram Shandy

About Me

I'm a 65 year old independent scholar (still) working on a book project about the SHADOW STORIES of Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays). I first read Austen in 1995, an American male real estate lawyer, i.e., a Janeite outsider. I therefore never "learned" that there was no secret subtext in her novels. All I did was to closely read and reread her novels, while participating in stimulating online group readings. Then, in 2002, I whimsically wondered whether Willoughby stalked Marianne Dashwood and staged their “accidental” meeting. I retraced his steps, followed the textual “bread crumbs”, and verified my hunch. I've since made numerous similar discoveries about offstage scheming by various characters. In hindsight, it was my luck not only to be a lawyer, but also a lifelong solver of NY Times and other difficult American crossword puzzles. These both trained me to spot complex patterns based on fragmentary data, to interpret cryptic clues of all kinds, and, above all, not to give up until I’ve completed the puzzle--and literary sleuthing Jane Austen's novels (and Shakespeare's plays) is, bar none, the best puzzle solving in the world!